TeleFlow Communicator

Open Communications for Business & Pleasure

Sometimes Open Source is Better

[ No Comments ] Posted on 10.07.08 under Uncategorized

When we originally started developing TeleFlow in 1993, open source was nearly unheard of.  In fact, with the exception of most of the analog and T1/E1 telecommunications standards, very few the of modern development standards we see today were employed. For example, the file standard “XML” showed up a good deal later in 1997, and VXML followed in 1999.  The development tools PHP and MySQL were released in 1995, and have since become two of the strongest web standards for creating web and communication applications.

Until recently, generally available voice development platforms did not evolve as quickly as web development applications due to the expense of deploying solutions that required voice hardware and relatively expensive telephone services.  Today, communications technologies and standards such as SIP, have opened the doors to deploying voice applications with far less expense compared to 1993.  The greater expense, to some degree, kept voice communications solutions closed as there was a perceived fear of loss of intellectual property.  There simply was not an incentive to open source software the way it had been on the web side.

After dabbling with an open source project or two, we, the developers of TeleFlow, decided to release TeleFlow in GPL 3.0 which we hope will be of benefit to a wider audience.  This was not an easy decision for us, but ultimately, we believe that this new direction is best for all existing users of TeleFlow, and eventually perhaps will even help it find new audiences.  In fact, a goal of open sourcing TeleFlow is to provide an easier means for web developers to readily expand the capabilities of their web applications into a voice environment.  This will be reflected in upcoming TeleFlow PHP releases which will include libraries, example code, and short tutorial videos to help cultivate this convergence.

Those of you who are long time users of TeleFlow will notice that our teleflow.org, is now the primary portal for not only the TeleFlow application, but also its help files which are now online.  Documentation is now expressed in Wiki format, which means that help can be expanded by anyone who wants to contribute.  There are volumes of useful information which are already linked directly to TeleFlow Designer (TeleFlow 2008 Update).  With time, users add help, PHP, XML and other solutions that could be helpful to the world.